


Mood

by canadino



Category: Gintama
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadino/pseuds/canadino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An act of reverence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mood

Takasugi doesn’t let Gintoki kiss him on the mouth. It isn’t in line either of their characters, even after years pass and they’re turning thirty-three this year and Takasugi’s living a terrible, terrible limbo of civilian life after having his crimes absolved in the interest of a peaceful Restoration, all because he’s on the right side of a national upheaval. Because his name doesn’t come with pomp and circumstance, he gets a pat on the back and a swift kick into a history that will forget his name within a few years. Gintoki isn’t much of a kisser, when he isn’t wooing ladies or worming his way out of a sticky situation, but when it’s about the third time he’s (quietly, because Kagura’s home tonight) having sex with Takasugi, he thinks the gesture would be appropriate. 

“Don’t,” Takasugi whispers. A lack of conflict has dulled Takasugi’s nerves; Gintoki knows the feeling. They’re still reeling from the war, and not the war that put an end to Edo. When he deserts, all those years ago, he finds transitioning into being a regular citizen the most painful experience - ignoring his instincts that makes him draw quickly at a minor movement beyond his line of vision, sleeping so light a shift in the floorboards can wake him, reminding himself no one is watching him. Takasugi’s untethered and ungrounded, which he has always been, but now he doesn’t have the proverbial beast snarling in him. It makes his whispers airy, so Gintoki actually has to listen to hear him.   


“Why not?” Gintoki mumbles, around Takasugi’s fingers.   


“I don’t like it.” Gintoki doesn’t know it’s because of what Shouyou tells him years ago, after their teacher catches Takasugi teasing the girls at the temple school by trying to kiss them as they shriek and giggle and push him away. A kiss is the most precious thing you can give to someone, Shouyou says. You see all those sweethearts, they only give each other coy looks on the street. A kiss is meaningful. Takasugi wonders why he never caught his parents kissing, not once in his life.   


“You don’t like it?” Gintoki changes targets and kissed his jawline, right up to the jugular. The pressure his lips apply is gentle. “I seem to remember you making a big fuss at being the big man when we visited those brothels years ago. You’d kiss every girl in the room.”  


“That was then,” Takasugi murmured, adjusting himself so Gintoki isn’t at an awkward angle between his legs. “I’m not sixteen anymore.” It’s because he isn’t sixteen that every time he wretches himself awake, the taste of iron in his mouth and seeing red behind his eyelids, the tremors he feels seem to threaten to tear him apart. It’s something that he used sake to sedate himself with during Edo, but since the children don’t trust him lurking in the house - the one with glasses watches him carefully when Gintoki isn’t in the room and the girl grips anything she’s holding a little harder when he walks past - he doesn’t drink as often. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he’s thrown out. But Gintoki is by his side, rubbing his back and reminding him to breathe. It’s during one of these episodes, when Takasugi is shaking so hard he thinks any harder and he’ll break his bones, that Gintoki lies him down and helps him relax.   


“I never said I was a good man,” Gintoki tells him afterwards in the morning.   


“You’re not sixteen?” Gintoki says now. “Could have fooled me, shortie.” He milks the climax from him so slow the retort dies on Takasugi’s lips in a breathless exhale. They’re too old now to feel comfortable lying on a futon drenched with sweat, so Gintoki kicks that one aside and lays out a fresh one, slithering himself right up next to Takasugi and tries to kiss him again.

“No,” Takasugi says, more forcefully this time. “What’s wrong with you?”  


“What’s the harm in it?” Gintoki asks. “We’re in the new age, squirt. Kids are kissing up on each other on every corner. You don’t think that if we kiss, I’ll have to marry you?”  


Takasugi sits up. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Kagura’s going to scream when she sees you in the morning.”  


“I don’t care. The girl is the least of my problems.” Takasugi quickly tries to gather his robe around him and not think about how strange the thought of kissing Gintoki would be, an image that makes him almost dissociate. He feels Gintoki sit up too next to him and the need to leave is making him twitch. He feels Gintoki’s mouth on his back, right above where Oboro stabbed him. “What are you doing?”

“Kissing your back,” Gintoki says. “I spent so long protecting it, can’t I at least let it know how much it means to me?”  


Takasugi sits there, letting Gintoki press kisses against his skin, in places where a scar prevents him from feeling part of it. “I won’t leave,” he says finally. “But you have to stop trying to kiss me.”

“Deal,” Gintoki mumbles into the nape of his neck.   


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for sticking through with this...leave a comment if you liked it!


End file.
